Four-dimensional (4D) trajectories are a cornerstone of the 4D Trajectory Based Operations (4D TBO) concept, which is a new paradigm in Air Traffic Management (ATM). It is a central idea of future airspace organization in the European Single European Sky ATM Research (SESAR) and U.S. NextGen initiatives.
In prior art techniques, a discrete representation of a 4D trajectory as a series of 4D points introduces certain problems. For example, known techniques require a large size of the trajectory data for a high-resolution trajectory (e.g., sampled every second). Further, some prior art techniques utilize a non-continuous representation with undetermined states between the trajectory points. Prior art solutions attempt to address these problems of providing a continuous description of 4D trajectories; however, the existing solutions are aircraft-centric and require providing some of the aircraft data (aircraft performance) and environmental data (weather) in order to be able to determine the state of an aircraft at any time instance of the trajectory.